When Patricia had finished talking to her uncle, hope and her hurried off to thier next errand. having acquired a defensive insect type she was still hoping to find a weak sky attribute and toxic attribute for her stingers to practice. these three were the most important. Since her stingers would be at a disadvantage in these match ups, they needed all the practice they could get. she hoped that she might be able to aquire a weak plant, water, and earthen beasts as well. if she had enough funds the full complement of matches would give her and her stingers some basic ideas about how they might deal with various opponents.
"of course thats just the attributes." Patricia said in thought. "there are going to be alot of different beasts and the most important thing isn't their attributes but how they fight. when comparing a stinger and a roller beetle the difference was night and day. how could what you learn from fighting one transfer to the other? the truth was they really didn't. "the job of identifying the opponents weaknesses and choosing how to approach the fight will be on me." she said. "and that means that between training i need to hit the books."
she arrived at her next destination. a stall filled with bird cages. a young man with beaming expression stood inside. "GOOD MORNING!" he said a little too loudly. the sky beasts around him began chirping and flapping thier wings in a cacophony of noise.
Patricia winced. maybe he's hard of hearing from spending too much time with the birds. "good morning."
the man continued to beam. "HOW CAN I HELP YOU!" he asked over the noise, his enthusiasm undamaged.
Patricia smiled. she kinda liked the guy. "well I need to get a low tier sky beast. one with good agility, and weak wide range attacks." she explained.
the man looked serious before giving a curt nod and pulling out a massive book. Patricia was startled but didn't say anything he flipped rapidly though the book occasionally stopping on a page to read before shaking his head and carrying on. after a few minutes he found a page that made him smile. "I THINK I HAVE JUST THE THING!" he exclaimed. hed turned and rustled around in the back until he pulled out a small cage containing what looked to be a ball of fuzz with a single leg coming out of it. the thing didn't seem to have eyes or a mouth. "WHAT YOU NEED IS A PUFF PUFF!"
Patricia looked at the fuzz with doubt. "are you sure?"
"OF COURSE! MY TEACHERS NOTES ARE NEVER WRONG!" he said with emotion. "IT SAYS HERE THAT DISPITE THE PUFF PUFF'S APPERANCE IT HAS UNEXPECTED AGILITY, AND A UNPERDICTABLE MOVEMENT PATTERN. IT POSSESES THE ABILITY TO ATTACK A WIDE AREA WITH LITTLE WARNING, THOUGH THE DAMAGE POTENTIAL OF THESE ATTACKS IS ALMOST ZERO!" he read off the page in his book with his chest puffed and pride in his eyes.
Patricia hesitated. "that sounds.... perfect actually." she admitted.
"OF COURSE!" he yelled. "THE PUFF PUFF HAS LITTLE USE IN BATTLE BUT IS AN EXCELENT CHOICE FOR TRAINING LOW TIER BEASTS. IF YOU BUY THREE NOW IT WILL ONLY COST YOU TEN SILVER!" he declared. Patricia weighed her options and eventually made a decision.
"three sounds great. can you hold them until I'm heading out?" she fished out her coins from her pouch, and handed them to the man.
"THANK YOU, SWING BY BEFORE WE CLOSE FOR THE DAY AND I'LL HAVE THEM ALL READY FOR YOU!"
***
Patricia collapsed face first when she finally made it back to her shed. little hope sat on her head and paced back and forth her concern plain. she turned her head enough to be heard around the pillow. "I'm alright. just tired." she sat up and hope stood on her head. "let's review what we got."
other than the roller beetle and the puff puffs she had also obtained, she had picked up several other beasts. a plant type called a dandy, an earthen reffered to a sand vole, and an unalined known as a hopping antelope. the dandy had the ability to amdit a cloud of fuzz that obscured its location. the sand vole would dig shallow channels and pushing the displaced earth up and other its body making it difficult to target effectively. finally the hopping antelope was relatively slow but could move in short bursts of quick hops. in the end she was unable to secure a toxic beast but this was actually reassuring, since it ment that they were in short supply and unlikely to appear in the upcoming tournament. the beasts she had acquired had a diverse set of abilities and fighting styles. getting her stingers some experiance fighting under different circumstances was sure to benefit thier growth. she couldn't wait to get started. but before she could, she had on last thing she needed to take care of.
***
"soooooo, you know that thing you've been working on?" Patricia asked trying to appear nonchalant.
"you mean my independent study?" Emilia responded cooly.
"no not that." Patricia said. "you know, the other thing."
"ooooh, that thing." Emilia said a slight smile appearing on her face. "so, you want a peice of my hard work?"
"I think it would help in my tournament." Patricia stated meekly.
"hmmmm, I suppose it might. but the real question is why should I let you have it? its my work after all, and the great Patricia hasn't needed any help in the past. besides this isn't what I made it for." Emilia teased.
"please emi, I promise ill make good use of it." Patricia said bowing her head as she pleaded.
"welllll, maybe I could lend it to you."
"really?! thanks Emi!"
"but youd have to make it worth my while."Emilia said with a cruel grin.
Patricia swallowed hard. "what do you want?" she asked afraid what the answer might be.
"i want the back corner of your half of the room. I've been needing a bigger bookshelf and I just can't fit it in my half." Emilia admitted.
"WHAT!? BUT THATS MY CORNER!" Patricia whined.
"You don't even do anything with it!" Emilia shouted back.
"thats not true! sometimes I put my dirty clothes there!"
Emilia's nose crinkled in distaste. "do you want the damn notes or not?"
Patricia's shoulders slumped. "fine the corner is yours.
emilia smiled wide. "perfect. ill put the notes on your bed."
Patricia thanked her roommate half heartedly before making her way back to her shed.
***
Patricia sat at the desk in her shed. all of the stingers were out of their cages and flew around, or sat idle all over the small space. little hope sat on the desk next to Patricia watching her work with intrest. in fact hope showed far more intrest than Patricia herself.
Emilia's notes were a valuable resource but made for incredibly dense reading material. a bound book the size of a stone tablet and twice as thick was the object of her current struggle.
"i will never understand that woman." Patricia said. emilia was upright in proper in almost every way, but everyone had a vice. for emilia it was pit gambling. her personal notes were a collection. of every low tier beast emilia had ever observed or heard of. each entry included a description of its appearance, abilities, combat style, general trends in strengths and weaknesses, how common they were within the arena, and even every known mutation she could find. there was so much detail packed into every entry that there was no chance Patricia could memorize it all.
in the end she limited herself to fully reading the entries on the most common beasts in the low teirs, and then briefly skimming the descriptions, strengths and weaknesses, and possible mutations of all the other entries that qualified for the tournament. even limiting the selection in this way didn't make the work any less intense. if she was to squeeze in all the reading, as well as the final bit of training she had planed she would need to keep her nose to the grindstone. she wasnt going to have time for anything other than work and a spot of sleep here and there, until the day before the tournament. "you have to let the beasts rest up before they go to the real show. not to mention-" Patricia yawned even though it was only a little after lunch. "ill need a bit of rest to be at my full strength as well." she rubbed her eyes in an attempt to drive away the tiredness. she slapped her cheeks and focused back into the book.
"bubble frogs. attribute: water. possible mutations: added earthen (bubble toads), added toxic (poison bubble frogs), added plant (lush bubble toads). desription: squat frog bodies with numerous spherical protrusions, color ranges from ligh blue to almost black, abilities:...
***
the training beasts ended up being incredibly useful. Patricia had placed protective covers over their stings, she wanted to get her moneys worth out of the training. the covers were tipped with a stamp that would make it clear where the strikes landed. the puff puffs moved by emitting puffs of air from one of numerous vents located all over thier body. thier movement was nearly impossible to predict. after moving, they released gusts of wind, that threw off the flight of her stingers. Patricia had initially focused on training the stingers ability to adjust their strikes at the last moment to land even on evasive targets. blister had quickly picked up on the trick, and after the 4th go hadn't missed a single attack. once they had a handle on that, she had shifted to practicing their own evasion. the stingers would approach the puff puff and when it released its gust attack the stingers would have to dodge away as best the could. if they could avoid most of the wind Patricia would reward them. Flicker had excelled in this exercise hardly even getting grazed by the wind.
the roller beetle was an interesting beast. her stingers completely lacked any ability to puncture its defense even if its stinger had been uncovers. she focused on training where was best to sting on insect beasts. targeting the space where multiple plates over lapped. blister again shined in this exercise, however precision wasnt the only factor in this training. she had replaced the original sting covers with a stamp that released ink based on impact strength. the darker the mark appeared, the stronger the strike. when considering both accuracy and strength together, Buzz only slightly out preformed Crabs.
Another category in which Crabs excelled was against the dandy. she hadn't been able to tell before but it turned out Crabs did infact have more going for him than just his even distribution of strengths. crabs was acutely perceptive. the bug had been far quicker than any of her other stingers at finding and striking the dandy. the first time Patricia had had a hard time accepting He had succeded so quickly. hovering around the cloud of fuzz for only a few moments before suddenly lunging into the cloud only to return a little hairier but filled with pride. when the fuzz cleared thier were three clear stamps across the plants main stem. the other stingers had more trouble but were eventually able to occasionally locate the dandy even through the thick cloud, though they took far longer than Crabs.
against Patricias expectations all of her stingers had initially struggled against the samd vole. its quick movements combined with the constantly shifting cover of soil, made landing blows difficult. in the end only blister and little hope had been able to land blows with any level of consistency. but the sand vole turned out to have another surprise. having grown sick of being poked it would occasionally throw clouds of sand and grit at its annoying pressures. when it did the stingers would occasionally find themselves incapable to remain aloft. even if they could stay in the air, the dust and sand coated thier antenna and covered their eyes making it difficult for them to stay in the fight. flicker and little hope coped with this best, managing to predict and dodge the vole's counter attacks. in the end Hope had been the winner against this combatant.
finally the hopping antelope. with its strange mix of slow powerful attacks and bursts of speed, the antelope was a different kind of enemy. Patricia had been forced to cover its horns and hoves with cushions in order to best avoid risk of serious damage to her stingers. this had slightly interfered with the antelopes movements but after it had grown used to the coverings it had been ready for sparing. flicker had of course faired best when it came to dodging, but everyone but Tox and Buzz had agility more than sufficient to avoid the lumbering strikes. those two had been thrown more than a few times when the attacks had connected. Patricia didn't like their chances if they had been hit for real.
at the end of the week she had a good idea of her teams capabilities, and shortcomings. the weakest preformer had been tox, but this was a given considering his potent venom hadn't been a factor in any of the training bouts. Patricia made certain to reassure the stinger that their time would come. and sooner than latter. the days had crept away one by one until finally, it was only two days until the first round of tournament fights.